A month later, Katherine Parr was marked out for investigation. This is the story John Foxe tells, twenty years later, in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. It is likely that he heard of it from those who were part of the court at the time; he is hardly likely to have invented it, since it does not serve any essential purpose in his Protestant ‘book of martyrs’ except to blacken the reputation of Stephen Gardiner. For that purpose, however, he may have embellished the facts of the matter. He reports correctly that, in this period, Henry kept largely to his privy quarters where he saw only his closest advisers. This was the atmosphere in which the king allowed Gardiner secretly to investigate his wife’s religious opinions for any taint of heresy. He even permitted certain articles of accusation to be drawn up against her. This is inherently plausible; given the facts of his own mortality, so obvious to him now, he may have been concerned about those in the immediate vicinity of his son after his death.
The articles of accusation were fortunately dropped on the floor of the court, where they were recovered by some ‘godly person’ who took them at once to Katherine Parr. It is more likely that a ‘godly’ friend, knowing of the machinations against the queen, privately warned her. Whereupon she fell ‘into a great melancholy and agony’; given her husband’s treatment of some of his earlier consorts, this is hardly surprising. Her terror was such, however, that one of the king’s own doctors was sent to minister to her; this man was also privy to Henry’s designs, and gave her further information about the enemies set to destroy her.
Yet the king called her to him one evening, and began to discourse on matters of religion. She took the opportunity of apologizing for her previous ‘boldness’ which was not done to ‘maintain opinion’ but to afford him diversion ‘over this painful time of your infirmity’. She is reported to have said, in order to assuage him still further, that she had also hoped that ‘I, hearing your majesty’s learned discourse, might receive to myself some profit thereby’. His vanity appeased, the king graciously condescended to pardon her. ‘And is it even so, sweetheart!’
The king and queen, together with some of their retinue, were in the privy garden a day or two later. The lord chancellor, Thomas Wriothesley, then came forward with a guard of forty soldiers to arrest Katherine Parr and some of her ladies on the charge of heresy. But the king interposed. He took the chancellor aside and asked him for an explanation. He was then heard to shout, ‘Knave! Arrant knave! Beast! And fool!’ before dismissing him and the soldiers.
It is a story from one source, and no other, but authentic touches can be found in it. The life of the court was indeed full of enmity and suspicion concerning the highest in the land, and there can be no doubt that differences over the pace and nature of religious reform were at the centre of the controversies. The rather serpentine conduct of the king, setting one group of courtiers against another, is also in character. It was a means of keeping control and of asserting mastery, even over his wife. It was further reported by Foxe that Henry never afterwards trusted the conservative bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, who had first started the investigation of Katherine. This mistrust is confirmed by the king’s subsequent treatment of the bishop. The queen was back in favour, and dabbled no more in pious discussions. She would very soon be devoted to nursing her husband in his last illness.
16
The last days
The king, in his mid-fifties, wanted no mention of death. He spent most of his time in his privy chamber at Whitehall or at Greenwich; the walls were covered with tapestries, and the furnishings included two or three tables, a cupboard for plate and goblets, and some chairs. Musical instruments were also to be found there for solace and recreation. Outside, in the presence chamber, the courtiers paid their reverences to an empty throne. This was still the site of the king’s majesty and must be so honoured.
He was by now ill and ailing. The royal accounts show that large sums were being spent for the purchase of rhubarb, a sovereign specific against the infirmities of a choleric disposition; he had always harboured powerful forces of anger but his fury was compounded by the fact that he was now in almost constant pain. He was obese and had to be transported in chairs called ‘trams’ through his galleries and chambers. A tram was an early form of wheelchair to ease the burden of his ulcerated legs. The chronicler Edward Hall reports that he ‘could not go up or down stairs unless he was raised up or let down by an engine’, no doubt some form of pulley or hoist. He was also obliged to wear spectacles, which were then known as ‘gazings’; they were clipped to the nose.
Yet he was able to strike out again. He excluded Stephen Gardiner from court for failing to exchange some diocesan lands with the king; that was the explanation proffered at the time, but it may also be that the bishop’s disgrace was the result of his intrigue against Katherine Parr. It is reported that although the bishop was banished from the king’s presence he would go with the other councillors to the door of the king’s bedchamber and wait there until these more honoured councillors returned, only to give the world the impression that he was still in favour. It is in fact easy to conclude that there was a general purge of the ‘conservative faction’ in this period. The greatest of them, the duke of Norfolk, was soon to be consigned to the Tower.
Norfolk had been a pre-eminent councillor for much of the king’s reign but in November 1546 he and his son, the earl of Surrey, fell victim to Henry’s fear and suspicion. Surrey had quartered the royal arms with his own, and had advised his sister to become the king’s mistress in order to advance the family fortunes; he had been heard to suggest that in the event of the king’s death his father should become protector of the realm. They were in double peril because the Howard family, as collateral descendants of the Plantagenets, had some pretension to the throne. In a sheet of charges the king added certain words in his own hand, marked here by capitals. ‘HOW THIS MAN’S INTENT IS TO BE JUDGED; AND WHETHER THIS import any danger, peril or slander to the title of the Prince or very Heir Apparent …’ The succession of Edward had to be protected at all costs.
In the early days of December Norfolk and Surrey were imprisoned. It was now reported that the duke had known about a secret scheme, concocted by Stephen Gardiner, to restore the papacy. It was revealed also that Surrey had said that the ‘new men’, the religious reformers, would after the king’s death ‘smart for it’. The earl was brought before a special commission at the Guildhall, on 13 January 1547, and duly sentenced to death. Norfolk escaped a trial, for the time being, but was consigned to the Tower. He was saved from the executioner only because of the king’s own demise.
The reports of the various ambassadors tell the same story of decline and decay; the king looks ‘greatly fallen away’ and is ‘so unwell given his age and corpulence that he may not survive’. His physicians were reported to be in despair, and rumours circulated that he was already dead. ‘Whatever his health,’ one ambassador wrote, ‘it can only be bad and will not last long.’
Yet who was to tell the king that he was dying? Even to ‘imagine’ the death of the sovereign was to incur the charge of treason. It was also unwise to snuff out the last gleam of hope. The doctors gave the charge to Sir Anthony Denny, who had for some time been the principal gentleman of the bedchamber. He approached his master and whispered to him that ‘in man’s judgement, you are not like to live’. He then encouraged him to prepare for death in a pious Christian manner. The king was advised to call for Thomas Cranmer but replied that he ‘would take a little sleep’ first. When the archbishop did arrive, he was too late; if Henry was not already dead, he was at least speechless. The king died at two in the morning of 28 January 1547. He had reigned for thirty-seven years and nine months.